Insurance Carrier Executives Debate Emerging Issues
This RIMS 2016 panel gathered senior executives from insurance carriers to discuss what they believe are the emerging issues in the insurance marketplace.
Panelist included:
- John Lupica, Vice Chairman Chubb Ltd, President North America Major Accounts & Specialty Insurance, Chubb North America
- Peter Eastwood, President, Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance
- Rob Schimek, CEO, Commercial, AIG
- Inga Beale, Chief Executive Officer, Lloyd’s of London
Inga Beale, what challenges is the digital age posing for the insurance sector?
We need to turn challenges into opportunities, but there is a lot going on in the world today. A recent study states 74% of insurance leaders said that business interruption is a challenge to their business.
We also have things like robotics and artificial intelligence coming our way. There have also been studies performed on which jobs are likely to disappear due to artificial intelligence and the insurance underwriter is one of the most likely reported to disappear.
Finally, customers are starting to demand more from our products and services. They do not want to pay for things that they do not need. We need to find the most productive way to study and utilize our data to create the best possible customer experience for them with products and services tailored to their needs.
Rob Schimek, how can AIG be successful when so few of your executives have insurance backgrounds?
Just recognize that the world is changing rapidly. AIG is no different. If we are not adapting, we will not last. We have assembled a compliment of leaders that was built for where we are headed into the future. We are innovating for where the ball is going and that requires leaders that have a variety of backgrounds.
What skills and experience are being sought when hiring risk managers?
The amount of talent entering this industry is phenomenal, so there is no concern about the health of the industry. We look for candidates who are hard working, strong communicators and those with industry internship backgrounds.
Being curious is a huge attribute. We can hardly keep up with what’s going on in the world. Looking for the thing that you missed or that next big thing is critical in this industry.
What is your company doing differently to train or recruit Millennials?
We are focusing on innovation. AIG has an “innovation boot camp”, where different individuals with different background focus on industry issues and future needs. From that, four new products were developed, including one focused on robotics.
We opened up all of our social media. We have also really adapted how we train, utilizing a lot more podcasts for our training development and have created more small team environments. We have also partnered seasoned workers with younger workers so that they can pass on their craft.
Are insurers interested in maintaining capabilities to handle claims themselves or do you think they want to shift claims handling to carriers?
A lot of what we do is handle complex claims. We think that we offer specialized expertise that is unique to a carrier that handles the volume of complex claims that we do.
As an industry, we could improve on delivering what the clients want. We look at things from our perspective. We can be inaccessible to clients at times because we aren’t keeping up with the times. The insurance industry has a long way to go to provide the ability to track where their claim is in the process in real time. We could also improve on the lack of transparency in the claims process.
Claims is the product. As an insurance carrier we should focus strongly on the claims process. You have to have pure claims knowledge and expertise and you lose that by outsourcing claims.